Karun sizzles in Malaysia; moves into second spot

Sepang, June 25 (UNI) Karun Chandok's superb run in the Asian Formula V6 continued and the former Team A1 India driver finished second and third in the round three and four of the series here today to move into second championship position.

The 22-year-old has 38 points in the championship position which is just eight less than the leader Hammad A Farden of Bahrain.

During the wet qualifying session, the E-Rain Racing driver set the fastest time in the first part of the knockout session, but was eclipsed in the final few seconds of the second part, lining up second on the grid alongside Hammad.

Today, the weather cleared and the drivers lined up under sunny skies in the finishing order of race one.

At the start of the 20 lap race, Karun moved ahead of Ingham while further behind New Zealander Matt Halliday moved up into third place. Right from the start, the Chennai born driver was struggling with a handling imbalance and Halliday, the A1 Team New Zealand lead driver, slipped into second place.

As the race progressed Al Fardan, Halliday and Karun circled at a furious pace, pulling steadily away from the pack. An accident on lap 11 brought the race to a temporary halt. On the restart, Karun fought an aggressive battle with Al Fardan and moved ahead into second place. The rest of the race was fairly incident free and at the flag it was Halliday in first with Karun in second and Ingham in third.

Later, Karun said, ''This was a hard weekend for us. But at the end of the day, to go home with two podiums and second place in the championship is something that both the team and I can be happy with.'' Karun goes to Indonesia which is a new circuit for him.

Results: Round 3 1. Hammad Al Fardan (Bahrain), 2. Seth Ingham (US), 3. Karun Chandhok (Ind) Round 4 1. Matt Halliday (NZ), 2. Karun Chandhok (Ind), 3. Seth Ingham (US) Championship positions 1 Hammad Al Fardan (46 pts), 2.Karun Chandhok (38 pts), 3. Seth Ingham (36 pts) UNI XC DH PDS BD1855